


All in Jest

by orphan_account



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Dark Past, F/F, F/M, Loss of Control, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21695815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s 1981. The Joker is confined under police custody at Arkham State Hospital following the incident at the studio. Unbeknownst to his hapless psychotherapist, Dr. Harleen F. Quinzel, Gotham City is beginning to descend into uncontrolled chaos. Dr. Quinzel has been told that Joker, still known mostly as Arthur Fleck, is extremely dangerous; not only delusional and psychotic, but an expert social manipulator. Overconfident in her previous successes treating the criminally insane, she has no idea what’s in store for her. The administration’s concern for this patient and their exhortations to exercise “the utmost care” made her chuckle in her superior’s face. Will her cavalier attitude prove to be her undoing? After all, the Joker always gets the last laugh.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Harleen Quinzel, Joker/Harleen Quinzel/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	All in Jest

Dr. Harleen Quinzel, thus far, was having a perfectly respectable afternoon. Though there’d been a decided uptick in the number of patients over the past few months, but nothing more than she could manage. She was a professional, after all. Harleen had heard some of the rumors: that the city was falling apart at the seams, but she’d never put much stock into such things. Gotham City’s lifeblood was rumors and secrets: more often than not, they turned out to be nothing more than vicious lies. So she tended to stay away from the news—hearing exposé after exposé, lie after lie, grated on her mind like coarse sandpaper. There was nothing she hated more than a bald-faced lie.

Above all else, Harleen Quinzel was practical and pragmatic. She’d learned at a young age to dismiss the absurd, because she’d had no choice. She’d had to grow up very quickly and so never enjoyed the traditional trappings of childhood. She could barely remember any of it—or perhaps, she was deliberately forgetting it. Either way, taking into account the absence of any record of her birth, she was 29. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure how old she was. Standing at around 5 foot 8, she kept her long, blonde hair tied back in a pinned-up ponytail. Carefully controlling her outward appearance, she sustained the illusion that her heart and mind were similarly maintained. She could force order on herself, and on the world, if she just tried hard enough.

Stepping into the high-security ward for the third time that day, she rounded a corner and found herself facing one of the Senior Executives as he was hurrying the opposite direction. Towering over her, easily 6 foot 5, Sr. Executive of Administration Harold Polacky had a harried, almost fearful look on his lined and sagging face. Harleen often thought he looked very much like a very tall, old cat. His hair was a rich, salt and pepper gray; it seemed the last six months had aged him quite rapidly.  
“Harleen, I’m so glad I ran into you. I’ve only got a minute. You’ve just been assigned to Arthur Fleck, right?” She nodded, holding her clipboard and diagnostic materials close to her chest.  
“Good. That’s… That’s good,” Polocky replied, more distracted than she’d ever seen him. “Not good, I mean. Not good at all. He’s dangerous, Harleen. Have you seen the news?”  
She shook her head and shrugged. “Haven’t had the time. Why?” She was aware that her patient had murdered a number of people, and that had had exhibited some symptoms of delusional psychosis—but that was all. “What… what did he do?”  
His eyes widened. “You mean, what _didn’t_ he do. He’s calling himself the Joker, now. It happened this morning—well, actually, it’s been happening for _months_ , Harleen. And we _only just_ _realized_ …”  
“Paging Administrator Polocky. Paging Administrator Polocky. You’re needed on Level 12.”  
“Oh for God’s sake,” he cried. “It’s all in your materials! Listen, Harleen, I can’t explain right now—just trust me on this. Don’t talk to him for too long. Promise me you won’t—he’s not _safe_ , do you understand me?” He hurried off, looking over his shoulder. “Not too long!”  
Harleen Quinzel shook her head, a slight smile hanging on her face. “I was _trained_ to handle the trouble cases,” she reminded herself. Though she had to admit, the way Polacky’s eyes had bulged, and that drained, haunted look on his stretched features had planted a small seed of doubt in her heart. She pushed her doubt away. _Doubt and fear are mind killers,_ she thought. _I will not be afraid._ But another thought came to her, unbidden, as she began to make her way through the winding corridors and flights of stairs that would lead her to her inevitable future: _Eyes are the doorways to the soul._ She realized then that she’d never seen such turmoil, such abject fear, in the eyes of Harold Polocky before.  
What Admin/Exec Polocky didn’t realize—what no one realized, at the time—was that someone had prevented Arthur Fleck’s case materials from ever being delivered to the Arkham Central Dispensary. No one on the inside knew how bad things had gotten outside—or would get. It would be revealed much later that Joker’s men had left the courier draped artistically over a pile of garbage in a back alley seven blocks from the Hospital. His heart, freed from the dark prison of his chest, had been placed in his hands; his body, like a fountain, pouring endlessly into the filth beneath him.

* * *

Harleen began to be aware of her footsteps echoing around the vacant hallways as she searched for Secure Examination Cell D-7. _Where is everybody?_ She wondered for the first time. She felt once more that pang of uncertainty in her heart, and once again suppressed it.  
Turning down yet another whitewashed corridor, she realized she had found her destination at last. A small army was guarding D-7—an assortment of what looked like military folk, police officers, and others that she couldn’t rightly identify.

“Officers, stand down. This is his psychologist.” One of the burly men of the unidentified group was speaking, his face masked behind thick, tactical armor. “She’s been briefed, let her through.”

She steeled her feelings once more. It took everything she had to move through the throng of armed men—never before had she seen such a turnout for a single patient. But she didn’t stop to ask. _Couldn’t stop_. Her resolve would break if she spent even a single minute more confronting her troubled heart. She produced her electric keycard and buzzed herself through into the windowless examination room.  
The room was draconian in its simplicity. Central to the room was a metal table, bolted to the floor, along with two metal chairs facing each other across it. These were not bolted. Arthur Fleck, or Joker, as he preferred to be called, was seated in one of these two chairs, his hands and feet bound by heavy chains and manacles through loops in the table. He was reclining backward, dangerously, supported by his chains; in truth, he looked as comfortable as a person could be. Circumstances be damned.  
When she stepped into the room, he let himself fall forward with a loud clang. “What’s up, Doc?” He said, grinning up at her. “So nice of you to join us.”

“Hello Arthur,” Harleen says, flashing him a tight-lipped smile. Recalling the many warnings she’d been given about this man, she couldn’t help but smirk. There was nothing altogether scary about him—just a tall, scrawny, hollow-looking man in a standard-issue hospital jumpsuit. “I’m Dr. Harleen Quinzel—"  
“Hmm… No.” He interrupted. “Arthur is dead.” And he began to laugh his raucous, strained laughter, almost hacking, to the point that tears glimmered in his eyes.  
“I’m sorry. It’s just… you wouldn’t get the joke.” He shifted his seat. “Quinzel, you said? My, my. Aren’t you just a treat for the eyes,” he said, giggling.  
Harleen rolled her eyes and sat down across from him.  
“This is fairly standard procedure, but I want it to feel like a conversation for you. I understand that you’ve murdered four men, and you’ve been suffering from delusions?” She consulted her paperwork, and realized for the first time just how lacking it seemed to be. She’d been told he had a fairly extensive therapy background, but there was only a scattering of notes—just office visits, and prescriptions. “Yes…” She continued. “Prescriptions for psychotic episodes, and a note here that you suffer from uncontrolled laughter.” She continued to rattle off what little information she had. She wasn’t prepared for this—not for a patient who was such an unknown. What had Polocky told her? _He’s dangerous, Harleen. Have you seen the news?_ Wishing more than ever that she could stomach the cesspool that was television, she pressed on, ultimately sounding like little more than a junior assistant tech rather than the eminent psychologist for the criminally insane.  


Joker was quiet for a few minutes.  
“Yes doctor. I’m… I’m very sick, you see. I kill people and I don’t feel nothing. NOTHING. Because, I guess, I AM nothing.” His voice was soft, his expression downcast. “I think it was my mommy. I think she made me like this, you know?” His face downcast, Harleen couldn’t see the faint smile playing on his lips.  
“I’m nobody. Nobody at all. I’m… just a wildcard on the side of the road. A trash bag floating in the wind. Gosh doctor, can’t you help me? I don’t want to hurt people any more, I really don’t; I want to get _better_ Doc.” As he was saying this, his voice was rising in intensity, a manic gleam filling his mask of a face. “Oh I just can’t STAND these URGES I have, Quinn. Can’t you please give me some… some drugs, or some therapy? Maybe you need to _beat_ this savagery out of me!” He was grinning openly now, his mouth hanging open. “Oh you just _have_ to fix me.” Lecherously, he began to buck his hips up into the table, laughing uproariously. “You see, I’m not in control of my actions, not at all, I’m a puppet, and all my imaginary friends in my head are pulling the strings!”  
“Enough!” Harley shouted, standing up. “Enough. I won’t have this, I won’t have it at all.” Her face was livid. “I don’t know who you think you are, but if you’re not going to cooperate, I see no point to my being here.”  
“Gosh, doc, I was just having a little… _fun,”_ he replied after a moment. “You seem a little on edge. Go on, sit down. I’ll be a good boy.” His smile was wide, and full of teeth. _Like a shark sizing up its prey_ , a small, unbidden thought suggested.  
Harleen sat down again, her face flushed. “Don’t do that again.”

“You have my word, my sweet therapist. I will cooperate… fully.” His tone was laden with suggestion, and dripping with an eerie seductiveness that Harleen couldn’t figure. Joker let out another bout of inappropriate laughter, like a bubble of gas had risen from the bottom of a carbonated drink. _As though there was so much laughter contained within him that at times, he couldn’t help but burst.  
_ “Let’s move on,” Quinn said, her face flushed. “Tell me about those boys on the subway.”  
His face fell a little, and his eyes glittered. “Those boys… They deserved it.”  
She nodded, scribbling a little on her pad. “Why, Arthur? Why did they deserve what you did to them?”  
“Do you like to roleplay?” He asked, ignoring her.  
“Arthur, please. Just let me get through my—”  
“Humor me.” He stretched out his hands in their manacles, as if in supplication. “Just humor me.”  
She sighed. Rubbed her eyes, and cleared her throat. When she replied, her voice was hoarse. “Roleplay can be an effective and often instrumental activity for meaningful—”  
“Nah,” he interrupted. “No, Harley, not that kind of roleplay.” He leaned in, conspiratorially, and whispered, “I could show you all of my fantasies, if you wanted. Good material for your notes, there.” He jabbed at her clipboard. “Oh, and, can I get an autographed copy when you’re done?” He laughed again.

She flushed scarlet and said nothing, frowning into her clipboard. Composing herself, she cleared her throat again and shook her head.  
“I can see that you’re not interested in working with me. When you’re ready to try to make some progress here—”  
All of a sudden, Joker’s face was as stony as though he were a statue.  
“Tell me, Dr. Quinzel. How did he die?”  
Harleen’s stomach went cold. Sweat began to bead at the back of her neck.  
“How did… who die?” She managed. “You’re asking me about… those boys on the subway—?" But she'd already betrayed the fatal clue.  
“No, Harley.”  
“Then… who…?”  
“Your father, Harley.”  
“It’s… Harleen,” she managed, even softer than before. “And you don’t know anything about me. My parents are both alive.” She even managed to look stern, as though admonishing him. But she’d let slip something crucial. He’d been able to tell from her manner and her speech that she’d been missing a parent. It was a gamble that he’d asked about her father—but then she’d gone and given him everything he needed.  
“On the contrary,” he said. “I know everything about you. I know that your parents died. That you have spent the better part of your life trying to mend the gaping hole in your past.” He was lying through his teeth. But he knew from the look on her face that he _had her_. That all thought of leaving the room had departed from her mind. He knew what she wanted. “You see, Harley. Things on the outside are far worse than you’ve been led to believe.”

Joker’s gaze left her face for a fraction of a moment. Harleen could not have noticed, as she was looking intently at her hands, lost in the growing fear that was gnawing at her insides like cold fire. He made eye contact with the same tactically garbed pseudo-military corporal, and winked. The signal given, gunfire erupted from outside in the hall. Muffled yelling and finally screams could be heard, like stones thrown down a deep well, scraping and bouncing down the sides. Planned just right, it seemed, his followers had taken care of the other military men. The only issue was getting Harleen’s keycard, and then he was free.

“Look at me,” he said, suddenly. She did, without much thought. “There is chaos in your mind and in your heart. You have done everything you can to suppress it, but I have seen it boiling out of you like fire. This society. It has taken everything from you. Taken your childhood, your freedom. The freedom to be who you really are.”  
“Why?” She mumbled, almost mute from the way he’d handled himself. How he’d turned the conversation around on her. “Why are you doing this?”

He realized that more than anything, he wanted to break this woman. To crack open that ordered mind and plunge her head first into his world. He would break her down, and mold her—in his image.

But to do that, he needed to get out of the hospital. It was, after all, no place to orchestrate an earthly resurrection. There was so much that needed to be done, after all. Both her mind, and her body, had to be made ready. There would be nothing left when he was done with her—nothing left but perfection, through ruination.

“The Joker,” he said, almost to himself. “Is a card that represents change. Chaos. Disorder. It can be the most powerful of cards…” He laughed a loud, spontaneous laugh again. His expression was severe, however—as though his laughter was angry. “Or it’s left out of the deck completely. Ah. But listen, Harley, listen to what’s going on outside.”  
She did. It was quiet, at first. Which meant the scuffle outside the holding cell was over. The same masked commando in tactical garb stared in at the two of them, unmoving, like a sentinel. Harleen realized then that something was very, very wrong.  
In the distance, her carefully protected hearing (there was no rock-and-roll in her youthful years) picked up the sound of what had to be explosions, and the _tat-tat-tat_ of automatic machine-gun fire.

“This city is _dying_ , Harley. And you will die with it, unless you follow me.”

She shook her head, dismayed, and made to stand up. But where was she going to go? Standing outside that door, she knew, was certain death. Blood had sprayed up into the commando’s face. She watched with mounting horror as he smeared a bloody, gloved hand against the glass.

“You won’t… you won’t let him kill me?”

“On the contrary. I see great promise in you, Harley. Great promise… But first, you need to undo these shackles. If you would. I’m not one for being bound myself—I much prefer doing the binding.” He giggled. Fleeting thoughts of escape flashed through her belabored mind. But there was nothing, she realized—nothing at all, that she could do.

The play relied on her fear. In truth, the insurrection movement was small, and rather well contained. The commando outside the door could do nothing to get in, not without her keycard. And the man bound to the table with her was no threat in his current predicament. Had she been content to wait… Just _wait…_ To hold out for the military proper to arrive, and settle the score… But she could not. He had filled her mind with doubt, in equal measure with an almost insane, desperate desire to let her own demons free. To stop fighting the inevitable decay of her morality, that pit of loneliness and sorrow she had thrown so much of her life into. Perhaps change really was what she needed. He knew her, after all. He knew that they’d died. No one knew, she’d been sure of that. No one could know about that time. No one could respect such a damaged psychologist, and never again could she work with the criminally insane—she knew this, she _knew this_ …

Joker raised a hand and snapped his fingers, breaking her out of her reverie. He'd brought her back to a different sort of insanity.  
“Tick, tock, Harley. Time’s almost up.” He feigned disappointment, sighing dramatically into his hands. “And I had really liked you, too…”

She stood up, as though sleepwalking, and pulled a small key from her coat pocket. But she hesitated, standing beside him. A dim realization had burgeoned somewhere in her consciousness. That she was being played, in spite of everything she’d trained for—that this was a _trick_ , that he really _was a Joker after all_ … That she’d been somehow hypnotized by his words, or was it really the _allure_ of what he’d said, about how he wanted to liberate her, and this city… She could not deny that his words were seductive, that she was incredibly and impossibly turned on by his very presence...

She was close enough, now, that he could grab her hand. Close enough that he could have his freedom with or without her. But his curiosity stayed his hand. He'd wormed his way into her mind, but would it be enough? Could she follow him of her own accord?  
She bent down to undo his shackles, and he was surprised. An image came to him of slamming her own the table, twisting her arm back to make her drop the key. He heard it clatter on the table as she cried out in pain. But no, she had released him. Of her own accord.  
“Every magician needs his assistant,” he mused, standing up and looking down into her uncertain eyes. Putting his hands about her neck he pulled her in for a rough kiss. He realized, belatedly, that she was gasping for air, and let her go.  
“Don’t you just love a guy that can take your breath away?” He smirked. “Fret not. I’ll take good care of you, my pet. My little Harley. Harley Quinzel…” He touched her cheek and giggled. The sound of her name rolled around in his mouth like marbles. He could tell that there was still conflict within her, still much work to be done. “No. You need a new name, I think, and I’ve thought of a perfect one.”

“Harley Quinn.”


End file.
